The Brutal Truth
Is That Sanders
Did Damage
Clinton
By Earl Ofari Hutchinson

ping with the political Devil, in this
case Trump.
So, how much should Sanders,
even though he firmly backed Clinton,
be blamed for his most rabid backers
breaking ranks and crossing the political Rubicon to vote for Trump?
Clinton says he poisoned the political
well with his drumbeat attacks on her
as a war mongering, handmaiden for
corporate interests, hard line beltway
Democrat. This did give Trump some

as Bill’s shove through of the draconian crime bill, this packed the jails and
prisons with Black men, the gut of
welfare, and the scrap of financial
industry checks.
But the Trump Black voters were in
the heavily minority cities and counties that went for Clinton overwhelmingly anyway so their vote was no factor in Trump’s win. The same could
be said for the Black vote drop-off in
2016. The numbers were still high
enough, though, not to be the
causative factor in Clinton’s loss.

Editor’s note: Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an
author and political analyst. He is an associate editor of New America Media. His
forthcoming book, The Trump Challenge to
Black America (Middle Passage Press) will
be released in August. He is a weekly cohost of the Al Sharpton Show on Radio
One. He is the host of the weekly
Hutchinson Report on KPFK 90.7 FM Los
Angeles and the Pacifica Network.

Blame Hillary
Not Bernie for
Her Failure
By Kirk Tanter

H

illary Clinton has finally taken
the gloves off and spoke her mind
about her Democratic presidential
rival, Bernie Sanders. She flatly
charged that Sanders hurt her White
House bid. She got very specific and
claimed that the “lasting damage” he
did to her campaign did much to put
Trump in the Oval Office. She took the
big broad side at Sanders in her new
book, What Went Wrong. Now that
she has made that charge against
Sanders, the question is, “Is she right?
The brutal truth is there is more
truth than vindictive hyperbole in her
blame game assault on Sanders. It’s
true that Sanders personally voted for
Clinton, campaigned for Clinton, and
urged his supporters to back Clinton.
But, three recent surveys showed that
in the three states that put Trump in
the Oval Office, Wisconsin, Michigan,
and Pennsylvania, a number of voters
who voted for Sanders in the
Democratic primary in those states
crossed over and voted for Trump in
the general election.
They were registered Democrats.
They did not simply stay home, cast a
vote for a third-party candidate, Jill
Stein, or write Sanders name in. They
actually voted for Trump, the candidate who seemingly represented
almost everything that Sanders’
abhorred. To take that step, a lot of
these voters had to really, really,
loathe Clinton to the point where they
would do anything to keep her out of
the White House. This included sup-

ammunition to con voters into thinking that he’d somehow be different
from her and any other establishment
politician, and really do something for
the beleaguered, forgotten, hard
pressed workers who watched as their
jobs and livelihood and future fled to
distant shores.
No matter how much Sanders
talked about the threat of Trump, and
urged Democratic Party unity, thousands of Bernie backers didn’t hear
any of that. The loud echo in their ears
was that Clinton was just no good,
and putting her in the White House
would just be Trump by another
name. This slammed the door hard on
the lock down, requisite party unity
needed to beat back the Trump
onslaught.
There’s the counter intuitive argument that says why pick on Sanders’
backers for the Clinton defeat, didn’t a
lot of African-American voters stay
home on Election Day? And more disgracefully, almost 10 percent of Blacks
voted for Trump. Isn’t this the voter
demographic that Democrats absolutely must have come out in huge numbers to offset the GOP’s bread and
butter conservative, blue collar, rural,
white male voters? A big Black vote
turnout certainly made the difference
for Obama in 2008 and 2012.
Yes, many Blacks did stay home,
and many made their dissatisfaction,
even bitterness, with and toward both
Hillary and Bill plain on such things

The finger still points back to the
legion of Sanders’ backers in the
swing states whose bellyache over
Clinton was severe enough to cause
them to punch the fateful vote card for
Trump. Clinton says she wanted to
say that at the time and warn of this
danger, but she was told by Obama
and others in the party to keep her
mouth shut about that. And instead of
hitting back harder against Sanders in
their debates and on the campaign
trail as she wanted, she had to stay
mute.
Obama and other key Democrats
said that this would further piss off
Sanders supporters against her. As it
turned out, she could have raged at
Sanders during the campaign for sowing enough division to insure her
defeat but it wouldn’t have likely
changed anything. Many of those that
turn-coated from Sanders to Trump
would still have cast their vote for
him.
Is that Bernie’s fault as Clinton
complains? No, if one believes that
Sanders had no sway over his backers.
Yes, if one accepts the reality that his
attacks on Clinton were so fervent that
they hit home hard with his most diehard supporters. The problem for
Clinton was that there were just
enough of them to tip the presidential
scales to Trump, and that’s the brutal
truth about Sanders. .

Denver Urban Spectrum — www.denverurbanspectrum.com – October 2017

16

I cannot disagree with Hillary

Clinton more about Bernie Sanders nor anyone else - damaging Hillary’s
candidacy for President. It was the
Clintons that adopted the defunct Lee
Atwater strategy of bashing the opponent to win an election.
Hillary did not have a strong clearly stated platform on what she would
do for the American people. Many
Black folks voted for Trump this 2016
Presidential race, or did not vote at all.
The deciding blue and swing states
that Trump won had low Black voter
turnout. Blaming opponents and
obstacles in her new book is irrelevant
and has nothing to do with her defeat
to Donald J. Trump. It is as if opponents should have fallen in line with
her Presidential aspirations.
The Clintons are self-proclaimed
‘Half-Republicans’ aka ‘Blue Dogs’ or
the 90’s term of ‘Tri-Angulaters.’
Repealing the crime bill – important to
Black Folks - was not of staunch interest to Hillary. Hillary never said that
she would fight to repeal the bill, and
further, if repealed, remove all of the
people from prison receiving minimum maximum lengthy prison terms.
And despite Black Lives Matter
protesting at her speeches on the
Crime Bill issue, all she could aggravatingly say to them is that they
should have ‘set up a meeting with